Light sources are widely used in a wide range of ambient lighting applications for creating a particular lighting atmosphere at various locations such as rooms. Professional indoor lighting applications, aimed at as offices, shops, hotels, etc., are particularly important areas of application.
The use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in such light sources becomes increasingly common due to, e.g., their low energy consumption, long lifetime, improved robustness and smaller size compared to traditional light sources, such as filamented light bulbs. Such LEDs are also generally capable of emitting light of various colors, which renders it possible to control the color of the light emitted from a luminaire comprising such LEDs. It is also known to control other properties of emitted light from LEDs, such as brightness and saturation, which may be effectuated in various manners.
Particularly in professional indoor lighting applications, it is in general desirable to be able to control a number of properties of the light emitted from the light source in order to be able to adapt to changing conditions and user needs.
Prior art control devices for controlling properties of light sources used in ambient lighting applications generally enable users to adjust the color, brightness, saturation or intensity of the light emitted from the light sources using color variation means, brightness variation means, saturation variation means or intensity variation means arranged on the devices.
Considering for example a color variation means in accordance with the prior art, such means generally are accompanied by a static printed color wheel (e.g. a circular sticker-type indicator) arranged for indicating an available color variation range for the color of light emitted from the light source upon operation of the color variation means. To make changes in brightness, saturation or intensity, corresponding variation means, similar to the color variation means, are in general provided on the device in addition to the color variation means, as the different properties generally have to be represented in different manners (for example, a static color wheel for representing color variation is not suitable for representing intensity variation). However, for a prior art control device capable of controlling a large number of properties, there will accordingly be required a large number of variation means arranged onto the control device, causing the user to be subjected to numerous possible selections to be made, which may result in confusion and frustration.
In addition, for a control device capable of controlling a large number of properties, it is possible that some properties may be represented by a range of available values delimited by two extreme values, e.g. in the form of a maximum and a minimum value, while other properties may be represented by a range of available values that are not delimited by two extreme values. In order to provide a user friendly and intuitive device, it would be desirable with a control device that is capable of communicating to the user during operation of the control device that a property can be represented by a range of values delimited by two extreme values, e.g. in the form of a minimum and a maximum value, if so is the case.
There is thus a need in the art for an improved control device that addresses the above-mentioned problems.